It Takes Two

Here’s this week’s new two minute noir flash fiction. It’s October but horror really isn’t my lane. This one does have a witch though.

It Takes Two

Nonna was not superstitious. But her attitude was, why take chances? So, she brought the infant Fonz to see that old witch on Carmine Street as soon as he was old enough to roam.

The leathery sorceress squinted her evil eye down at the squirming bambino and pronounced what could only be called good news and bad news. The bad news was almost implicit. By entering the violent family business, that thing of theirs, it was taken for granted the boy was unlikely to die in a senior living facility. The good news, however, was a welcome balm.

“It will take more than one soldier to take the kid down.”

Now that was no grant of immortality, but as a practical matter it was a nice advantage to carry in your hip pocket. As Fonz matured and grew into more substantive tasks within the organization, he was able to inveigle himself largely into individual tete-a-tetes as a means of ensuring his safety. He came to be known as Han Solo for his penchant for one-on-one dealings.  

He never disclosed “The Prophecy” as he and his maternal line secretly called it, to anyone at work, chalking up his preference for singles matches as a throwback to the manners and conventions of the outfit’s golden age.  

Accordingly, he had no reason to expect the encounter to be his last when he met up for a routine cash drop on a foggy pier with an approaching lone figure who eventually materialized as a sturdy, pretty, brunette. By way of greeting, she produced a sleek Glock 19 which barked three quick shots into the stunned Fonz’s ribs.

Fonz was not surprised to be offed by a woman. The Prophecy was gender neutral and Fonz was evolved enough, in at least certain respects, to understand a female was as capable as a man of dealing death. His only surprise was that she was a solo act. How could that be? The Prophecy as fleeting as a microwave warranty? Fonz knew with the life he had chosen he wouldn’t live forever but he thought he could rely on certain cosmic grounds rules.

But then he saw it. When the killer leaned over to pick up her spent casings, her trench-coat uncinched and swung open revealing around the belt-line a parabolic swelling that could be only one thing. A baby bump.

Fonz wheezed upward an urgent inquiry. “How far along are you?”

“About seven months.”

As the big referee in the sky continued his final ten count against the prone former champion, he looked up at the rotund new title holder and the mottled sky above them with a triumphant smile. It all made sense. The universe was in order.

It was a two-man job after all.